I have been a member of this forum for a while. Most of the time here limiting myself to lurking in the background without saying much (I am posting more recently). I was wondering those of you who where raised as JW did you experience physical abuse as a child? If so do you think it was related to how the organization encouraged their members to parent, or do you think it was just an aberration due to your parent’s nonability to appropriately discipline and raise children? The reason I ask is I was raised by an extremely abusive JW mother. The memories of the physical and emotional abuse still haunt me. My mother is elderly now and caretaking of her is in part my responsibility. I am trying to be a good son, in spite of the past. Sometimes I find it so difficult however. When I was growing up I spoke to the elders on more than one occasion, I found them ill equipped, as well as nonresponsive in their dealing with the situation. Please give me your insights I am still trying to heal and move on.
Physical Child Abuse.
by recovering 11 Replies latest watchtower child-abuse
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Mr. Majestic
Recovering..... you have a PM...
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Lady Lee
My mother was very abusive to me and my siblings before she became a JW. She only got worse after. Now she had "God" giving her permission to beat the crap out of us. The elders applauded her use of the beat - a leather strap she got from the show maker. It was about an 1 1/2 wide and about 2 feet long.AND it stung. My sister didn't remember this but she regularly went to school with welts and bruises on her body. I got my last strapping when I was 17 shortly before I got married. She kept the strap on a nail by the front door and since we had the book study in our home everyone knew she had it and used it.
I cannot imagine being in the position of caring for her now. My heart goes out to you. If at all possible delegate some of the responsibily especially if you have the money to pay for it. Consider it as a gift to yourself. If you can't afford it look for social services that might provide some assistance. There are a lot of agencies that will provide some help to take some of the load off of you.
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recovering
I can remember the belt (razor strap actually) Welts where common. When I did tell the elders about what I was experiencing I got some of the lamest excuses. I.e. "It is a hard situation, your mother is from Portugal, and they discipline differently." I had a real hard time reconciling myself regarding their attitude when I was young. It just did not make sense. I used to wonder if it was ok in other countries for Jehovah’s witnesses to torture their children? To be honest one brother (not an elder) tried to talk to my mom about what he was observing, to no avail. One elder met with my mom in hopes of her easing up on how strict she was. I guess he did not handle it well. The situation got worse. She was upset that I aired our family’s dirty laundry to the elders. (she screamed and yelled and beat me to within an inch of my life) This was ironic since the she ran to the elders with anything I did that she was not in agreement with. (choice of friends, school field trips, how I studied etc.) My father died when I was 12 years of age so I had no one else to turn to, and a deep sense of responsibility towards looking after my family. I have a younger sibling as well as my mom. My halve brothers and sisters from my Fathers first marriage (before he became a JW) at one time wanted to rescue me. My mother would not hear of it. My brother and sister where not witnesses.
Like I commented on before I am now in the position of caring for her in her old age. It is so hard to truly forgive. I am trying to be the better person and demonstrate the unconditional love that I found lacking from my mother and the JWs in general. Am I deluding myself? How do I cope with the feelings I have? I have looked into assistance in caring for her. She continues to lay a guilt trip on me as far as why I do not visit her more often or do more for her. I call about every 3 to 4 days. I also live several states away from her so traveling to visit is difficult.
Please forgive my ramblings; I hope I am making sense.
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Lady Lee
I am very glad to hear that you don't have her living with you.
Ignore the guilt trips. You are doing what you can and if she doesn't like it you can inform her that she can get help elsewhere.
As for forgiveness. I recently made a comment on the board that we don't have to forb=give people who continue to hurt and mistreat us. We don't have to turn the other cheek. You have every reason to be angry.
Here is what I said on the other topic:
Too often we hear that we need to forgive the people who hurt us. Bull. If they don't admit what they did and how it hurt us AND stop hurting us we owe them nothing.
Then we hear that people need to forgive themselves. This one baffled me for a very long time. In fact until just a couple of minutes ago. Forgive myself? I did nothing wrong (in regards to my childhood abuse)
But something just clicked.
As victims we often participate in something called ruminative thinking. We sit and go over what happened detail by detail and then blame ourselves for not having been able to make the abuse stop. THAT is what we need to forgive and let go.
It wasn't in our power to change or stop what was happening to us. If we could have done something to make it stop we would have found it. Abused wives do the same thing. They go over and over incidents looking for some magic thing they could have done to make the abuse stop.
But the reality is that there isn't one single thing WE could have done to stop people from abusing us as children. And the only thing an abused spouse can do is get out and never go back.
We need to stop the ruminative thinking and forgive the child victims and the adult victims we were and let it go.
When it comes to forgiving others - I was always willing to turn the other cheek only to get that smacked too. Now I am more cautious with it. People have to change and stop hurting me or I am GONE.
Is forgiveness important to me?
Yes but for the right reasons
Do what you can and don't let her guilt you into doing more. And don't ever move her into your home. It is clear she hasn't changed much in her attitude towards you. You don't owe her the rest of your life. -
LouBelle
You know, every now and then I flashbacks to some of the hidings I got. Getting slapped while during the service in front of everyone was extremely humiliating, especially when I wasn't allowed to go to the bathroom to cry. I honesly considered the hidings ( i don't know if I could call them beatings ) as normal. Jeez - how ridiculous does that sound.
The worst I ever got was being punched in the face, while the side of my face. I still had to go to the meeting. then I had to go to the doctor as my ear canal had swollen...all because I told the person we were going to pick up that we were running 5 min late *shrug*
christ - I haven't dealt with this shit, never thought I had too.
recovering - your post has trigged my own memories. Lady Lee has given you some good advise, if you can afford for someone else to look after her then you should. You need to heal and live your life as best & happy as you can.
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recovering
Thank you everyone for your advice. I will try and keep what you have councelled in mind. My non-jw wife tends to agree with you all. I saw a topic on most parent's would be proud on this website. I could relate to this poor person's plight. I am begginning to see that I was not the only one to experience these issues within this cult.
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no more kool aid
Recovering, I don't know how old you are, but I think it was quite common to beat JW children in the 1960's especially. I was not treated as badly as you were, but was spanked very frequently with a hand, paddle or a belt. The humiliation was the worst, because it was usually at a meeting and like Loubelle says people were all around to see you cry. Then when I cried too much I heard " do you need more to cry about"? Sometimes something a little more to cry about was readily provided. I think JW children are put into so many situations that it was almost impossible for a child to behave. Like 8 day assemblies, field service and meetings. There was a lot of pressure for the parents to have the perfectly behaved child to prove what good christians they are. I still have those thoughts that I must be a bad person, after all I was raised thinking I was so bad that I needed a good beat down every few days.
There was a family at our congregation that beat their children. The last meeting that my husband went to, he told me that 2 of the children had broken bones and appeared worse than ever. I finally felt strong enough about my own past issues to call social services. We are told by friends that "for some reason they don't seem to hit the children as much now". I hope it did some good.
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momzcrazy
My parents were both very abusive. I frequently went to meetings with welts from neck to knees. I couldn't sit in the hard plastic chairs without making them hurt worse. I once got beat again for showing them to a friend in the bathroom.
Now my brother actually got the worst of it. He was beat UP by my dad. Fists, kicks, thrown into walls, the works.
I stood up to my dad finally and called the cops to prevent another beating. My brother never went back. The ensuing child custody battle divided our extended family. I, of course, was fed up and angry with my dad. We hardly spoke after that. And he died 6 months later.
My mom is still a JW. She, quite handily, has forgotten all of it. She's all of 58. She never has acknowledged any of it. The episode of breaking a plastic spoon over my ass for not taking a nap is talked about with laughter.
Luckily, she feels no maternal attatchment and wants to be put in a nursing home when it is necassary. OK by me.
My biggest struggle is to not be that way with my kids. Not just the beatings. But the non-presence and neglect. By 10 I was in charge of the house. My mom cleaned other people's houses, took care of old people, and came home to bed. And we had service meeting at our house 2 times a day, all week. The house had to be kept spotless, or another beating. Nearly every day we were hit.
I now know that my parents were better than their parents, and it's my job to be better than them.